Rick Sanchez: Why Clinton needs a Sanders VP

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during a primary election rally, on June 7, 2016, in New York.
(ap)

She’s done it! Hillary Rodham Clinton has reached the number of delegates necessary to claim the title of presumptive nominee. The former secretary of state, New York senator and first lady obtained the 2,383 delegates needed on Monday with a decisive weekend victory in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and a burst of last-minute support from superdelegates.

But now she’s slammed the door. She’s put the official nail in Bernie Sanders' electoral coffin by winning New Jersey, California and then going on to have a hell of a good night.

Has Hillary Clinton won the nomination? The short answer is yes. But for her, a much less achievable victory and much more complex game is how to assuage Sanders and his supporters, who, if you haven’t noticed, happen to be Obama voters.

- Rick Sanchez

It’s all good and Clinton deserves her bow or moment in the sun, but there’s still something troubling about her win/coronation if for no other reason than the fact that she achieved it with so much help from the Democratic Party, her big donor money and reporters all over the country, who seemed convinced it was their job to pull for her from the start.

That said, with last night’s primaries now as part of the record, she can finally say she’s won a majority of ‘pledged’ delegates — those are the delegates awarded on the actual outcome of elections.

Her achievement is noteworthy even if slightly muted in terms of national intensity. Why? Because it seems every single American, including even my 14-year-old daughter, has at some point felt the "Bern" during this campaign. That’s right, Bernie Sanders is the real thing — he has captured the imagination of millions of American and he’s done so with a much more uplifting and certainly un-Trumpish inspirational message that has never been offensive, insulting or for that matter bigoted.

Bernie Sanders deserves his props and knows it. That is why he continues to insist that he’ll take the fight to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next month. The question now is when does he leave "well enough" alone and under what terms?

Bernie Sanders has fought the good fight and lost. Now, given the fact that Clinton has double his delegates, Sanders needs to start thinking about what to do with his share.

It’s no small share either. As the leader of what can only be described as a movement of loyal followers, Sanders has what George W. Bush once called “real capital” and deserves to use it as he sees fit.

He’s too thoughtful to not understand what he has and too passionate to simply allow his followers to disband their movement. Besides, it’s now as much about what he does as well as what she does.

Has Hillary Clinton won the nomination? The short answer is yes. But for her, a much less achievable victory and much more complex game is how to assuage Sanders and his supporters, who, if you haven’t noticed, happen to be Obama voters. Can she become our nation’s first female president without those voters? The answer for many political insiders is somewhere between "not sure" and "probably not."

That is why Sanders may want to hold out for one more thing—the one thing that may very well guarantee another Clinton presidency: a Sanders vice presidency!